Lightning deaths down as people are learning to get to safety at first signs of bad weather

If you hear thunder lightning could be close enough to strike.

If you hear thunder lightning could be close enough to strike.

Staff and wire reportsOf The Morning Call

With the sky growing dark and a dangerous storm coming quickly last year, park rangers at Beltzville State Park in southern Carbon County got on loudspeakers to warn swimmers to get out of the lake so the park could close for everyone’s safety.

Many of the 3,000 visitors to the popular swimming spot had already left the park on the muggy summer day, but three swimmers were not so lucky.

A bolt of lightning crashed down on the lake — one of several ground strikes in the area Aug. 13, 2016 — killing one swimmer and injuring two others.

Lightning strikes, once one of nature's biggest killers, are claiming far fewer lives in the United States, mostly because people have learned to get out of the way.

In the 1940s, when there were fewer people, lightning killed more than 300 people annually. So far this year, 13 people have died after being struck, on pace for a record-low 17 deaths. Taking the growing population into account, the lightning death rate has shrunk more than 40-fold since record-keeping began in 1940.

The death at Beltzville was one of 39 all of last year, according to the National Weather Service. Before that, the last fatal lightning strike in the Lehigh Valley region happened in 2012 when a man was killed and nine others injured at the Pennsylvania 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway.

Our victims are at the wrong place at the wrong time— John Jensenius Jr., National Weather Service

Lightning strikes have not changed — they hit about as often as they always have, Penn State University meteorology professor Paul Markowski said.

A big difference: Fewer of us are outside during bad weather. If we're not huddled indoors, we're often in cars. Vehicles with metal roofs — not convertibles — are safe from lightning, experts say.

"As a society we spend less time outside," said Harold Brooks, a scientist at the National Weather Service's National Severe Storms Laboratory. "Especially farmers. There aren't just many farmers around."

Decades ago, farmers would be in fields and were the tallest object, making them most likely to get hit, National Weather Service lightning safety specialist John Jensenius Jr. said.

When bad weather is looming before the start of a ball game at Allentown’s Coca-Cola Park, umpires and grounds crews aren’t the only ones looking out. Team officials are closely tracking radar and lightning strikes, according to Kurt Landes, president and general manager of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.

“There have been times where we’ll open our gates early or late to better ensure our guests’ safety,” he said. “Or we’ve also made public address announcements asking fans to head to cover on our concourse due to an approaching storm if we have any reason to believe strong winds, lightning or other dangerous effects are present with it.”

That helps explain the drop in yearly lightning deaths from about 329 in the 1940s to about 98 in the 1970s. The numbers have kept plunging. From 2007-2016, average yearly deaths dropped to 31.

Improved medical care also has played a key role, including wider use of defibrillators and more CPR-trained bystanders.

When Dr. Mary Ann Cooper started working in an emergency room in the 1970s, there was nothing in textbooks about how to treat lightning victims.

Now, instead of treating lightning patients the same way as people who touch high-voltage wires and are burned, doctors focus more on the neurological damage, said Cooper, professor emerita of emergency medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Perhaps the biggest reason deaths are down is because of efforts to teach people not to get hit.

Since the Beltzville State Park lightning tragedy, rangers at the state’s 121 parks continue to follow precautions of alerting swimmers by loudspeaker and closing the parks if there is the threat of dangerous weather, according to Terry Brady, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“If a bad storm is coming, they will clear the pool,” Brady said. “We have a constant vigilance.”

Sometimes that is not enough, he warned. Last year’s fatal strike happened just seconds after the warning was issued when park rangers spotted bad weather speeding toward them.

Smartphone weather apps that feature severe weather warnings also have played a role in keeping people alert before lightning strikes, the IronPigs’ Landes said.

“In general, the advance and availability of technology, especially mobile technology, has played a large role, in my opinion,” Landes said. “Guests have fingertip access to updated weather, apps, radar, etc.

“So it’s less likely to be caught off guard,” he said.

Men are four times more likely to be killed by lightning in the United States than women, statistics show. Men do riskier things that get them in trouble in storms, Cooper and Jensenius said.

"Our victims are at the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place is anywhere outside. The wrong time is anywhere that you can hear thunder," Jensenius said.

An analysis of 352 U.S. lightning deaths from 2006 to 2016 found people were most often doing something near water — fishing, camping or beach activities — when they were hit. Golf doesn't even crack the top dozen activities, but soccer does, Jensenius said.

In 2009, a 53-year-old Bethlehem Township man was killed by lightning while doing yard work at his home. At the time, a meteorologist said he was struck during a “garden-variety thunderstorm” that quickly passed through the Lehigh Valley.